Thursday, January 5, 2012

01/05/2012
House prosecutors are into
dirty play, aided moreover, by the yellow media, what with the lead
prosecutor, Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas Jr., at a media forum, coming up with
a deed of sale document of a condominium said to belong to Supreme
Court Chief Justice Renato Corona, and claiming four more Corona
properties that he said the prosecution is in the process of verifying
while calling on the CJ to make public his Statement of Assets and
Liabilities Networth (SALn).

The next day, the yellow media had a
photo of an empty Taguig penthouse which is not even the condo that the
CJ owns, and which condo, incidentally, he had earlier disclosed in his
reply to the impeachment complaint..... MORE

Damascus is criticizing the US for sending an envoy to Cairo's Arab
League discussions about ending the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent.
London-based political analyst Chris Bambery says the US is preparing
for a military intervention in Syria.

­According to Barbery, sanctions against Syria are only the beginning of Western intervention. "The
key ally in this enterprise, Turkey, has been involved with the Free
Syrian Army – training them, and we know there are also American
advisers in those camps in Turkey," he says. And, "when you
combine all that – sanctions, diplomatic moves, the involvement with the
Free Syrian Army, it begins to create a dynamic that though perhaps the
Americans don’t want involvement in the military operation in Syria,
they can pull it in that direction.”.... MORE

“A monetary union without political union is impossible to maintain,”
economist Arjo Klamer said 20 years ago. And as Europe struggles to
deal with the euro crisis, the EU countries are still too different to
politically unite, Klamer told RT.

Klamer, who is a professor of the Economics of Art and Culture at
Erasmus University in Rotterdam, says a political union should be formed
now, because stronger fiscal coordination and better social policy
would support the euro. However, “There is too much heterogeneity. The countries are too different.

Countries are too attached to their own sovereignty,” he told RT..... MORE

With their common enemy dead and gone, the uniting factor which bound
Libya’s former rebels in their fight against Muammar Gaddafi has melted
away. Now, in-fighting among the different armed factions is spilling
onto the streets.

Meanwhile, thousands of Libyans remain behind bars waiting for the
new rulers to try them for their crime of failing to jump ship.

One
of the first amnesties of the new Libya was when hundreds of men and
women, many of them sub-Saharan immigrants, were released from a
makeshift prison. Most of them had spent several months in captivity for
the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..... MORE

The establishment’s war against Republican presidential hopeful Ron
Paul has been evident since the Texas congressman began surging in the
polls, but the previously privy attack on the candidate was made public
to millions Wednesday night.

During a live interview Wednesday night from an Iowa caucus location,
CNN briefly spoke to an US military veteran and adamant supporter of
Rep. Ron Paul until the soldier began praising Paul for the
non-interventionist ideals that separate the congressman from the
mainstream candidates endorsed by the establishment..... MORE

01/05/2012
He may enjoy the title Chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) but Nicanor Bartolome may be far from one.

According
to reliable sources inside Camp Crame, ex-fugitive, Sen. Panfilo “Ping”
Lacson, who is reportedly being eyed by President Benigno “Noynoy”
Aquino to take over the helm of Department of Interior and Local
Government, is already wielding his influence in the force, particularly
on the appointment of officers in juicy positions.

According to
the source, Ping, who went into hiding after being implicated in the
Corbito-Dacer double murder case, only to surface later after Noynoy
assumed the presidency, is imposing himself on Bartolome, allegedly
dictating on the PNP chief on who to appoint to certain positions in the
police organization, prompting one official to described Lacson as the
“de facto chief PNP.”.... MORE

A
watered-down version of a controversial bill seen crucial in achieving
transparency in government transactions was approved yesterday by
President Aquino.

Press Undersecretary Manolo Quezon III admitted
that the original version of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Bill has
been defaced and many of its crucial provisions that promote free access
to information have been removed.

The Malacañang version of the
bill includes giving special shield for the President and his official
family from being scrutinized on the basis of an FoI Law..... MORE

Majority
of Filipino workers in Syria have rejected the Philippine government’s
offer to repatriate them to the Philippines for free amid the worsening
political security situation in the troubled Middle East state, citing
scant employment opportunities back home, Foreign Affairs Secretary
Albert del Rosario admitted yesterday.

Del Rosario, who flew to
Syria last weekend to personally check on the progress of evacuation
efforts of the Philippine Embassy there, said many Filipinos have
expressed their desire to remain even as the government declared the
highest crisis alert in the country that calls for mandatory
repatriation of all its nationals.... MORESource: The Daily Tribune

Katipunan heroine’s remains brought to QC hall today

01/05/2012
The remains of Melchora
Aquino, more popularly known as Tandang Sora, are laid today at the
Quezon City Hall after their exhumation from Himlayang Pilipino before
they are brought to their final resting place at a shrine exactly where
she was born 200 years ago.

At a press conference, Mayor Herbert
“Bistek” Bautista and Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte, who heads the Task Force
Tandang Sora, said the relics of the Grand Old Lady of Katipunan, who
was said to be a look-alike of actress Dawn Zulueta when the city’s lone
heroine was in her 20s, will be brought to the city hall in a
flag-draped casket and on a horse-drawn carriage..... MORE